COVID-19 candidate genes and pathways potentially share the association with lung cancer

Abstract

: COVID-19 is considered the most challenging in the current situation. At the same time, lung cancer is also the leading cause of death in the global population and is among the top human diseases and highly complex in terms of diagnostic and therapeutic approaches and are among the most frequent and highly complex, and heterogeneous. Based on the latest update, it is known that the patients who have lung cancer are considered to be significantly at higher risk after COVID-19 infection in terms of survival, and there are a number of pieces of evidence that support the hypothesis that these diseases may share the functions and the functional components. Multi-level unwanted alterations such as (epi-)genetic alterations, changes at the transcriptional level, and altered signaling pathways (receptor, cytoplasmic, and nuclear level) are the major source which promotes a number of complex diseases, and such heterogeneous level of complexities are considered as the major barrier in the development of therapeutic. With so many known challenges, it is critical to understand the relationships and the commonly shared aberrations between them, which is difficult to unravel and understand. A simple approach has been applied for this study where differential gene expression analysis, pathway enrichment, and network-level understanding. Since gene expression changes and genomic alterations are related to COVID-19 and lung cancer, their pattern varies significantly. Based on the recent studies, the patients who have lung cancer and if it gets infected with COVID-19, there is less survival chance. So, we have designed our goal to understand the genes commonly overexpressed and the commonly enriched pathways in the case of COVID-19 and lung cancer, for which we have presented the summarized review of the previous work where the pathogenesis of lung cancer and COVID-19 infection have been focused and further we have also presented the new finding of our analysis. So, this work shows not only the review work but also the research work. This review and research study leads to the conclusion that growth-promoting pathways (EGFR, Ras, and PI3K), growth inhibitory pathways (p53 and STK11), apoptotic pathways (Bcl-2/Bax/Fas), and DDR pathways and genes are commonly and dominantly altered in both the cases COVID-19 and lung cancer.